Everything’s Embarrassing, Everything Is Romantic, Everything in Our Fridge Is Frozen

on frozen milk, quarter-life chaos, and learning to love my tiny apartment — my first entry on Developing Feelings

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It was the middle of a Sunday brunch rush, and I was hiding in the walk-in freezer at work. My head was pounding, my apron smelled faintly like mimosas, and my phone buzzed with a text from my equally hungover roommate: I NEED milk right now. Then: it’s frozen. Then a photo of her banging the carton against the counter, trying to break up the ice.

I laughed. Not because it was that funny, but because it just made sense. Of course the milk was frozen. Of course our freezer was overtaking our fridge again. Of course my life felt like that—everything technically working, but still stuck.

Most days, I’m in non-slip Skechers, working nights and mornings and weekends, trying to make rent and establish something that resembles a routine in New York City. Sometimes a group of people in suits will come into the restaurant after the workday for happy hour, and I feel this brief, sharp envy. I wish I could clock out at five, grab a drink with coworkers, and have a normal weekend. Then I remind myself that this is exactly the life I said I wanted. Because of course I’m a waitress in the big city, post-college graduation, struggling to get a creative job. I mean, what a cliché.

Waitressing does this strange thing to your identity. You start slipping into little roles, versions of yourself designed to fit what each table expects. Sometimes I’m chatty, sometimes I’m quiet. People ask where I’m from, and when I say North Carolina, it’s always the same: Wow, the big city must be a lot different. Then comes the inevitable advice: It’s a hard industry to break into, but you’ve just gotta be aggressive and never give up. Like, thank you, Captain Obvious. It’s sweet, but sometimes I just want to nod and disappear back into the waitress station.

When I’m finally walking home, my body buzzing from the noise and too many energy drinks, the city feels both alive and indifferent. Everything keeps moving even when I don’t know how to. I moved to New York in August after years of picturing what it would be like—the energy, the independence, the sense that something could happen at any second. And it’s all true, just not entirely in the way I expected. I love our apartment. It’s tiny, but it’s ours. My room barely fits my bed, my desk, and my cat, Kali, but it feels like the right kind of cramped—and at least I know that if I trip over my laundry basket, my mattress is probably close enough to catch my fall.

My roommates, two of my best friends, make this city feel softer. We have our moments, but they’re home in a way nothing else here is, and I’m so grateful for that. Some nights I come home at midnight and they’re both asleep, the apartment quiet except for Kali purring somewhere in the dark. Other times, I open the door and find them on the couch with her wedged between them, watching something ridiculous like Ice Age: Continental Drift, and I can finally stop holding my breath. It feels familiar, like being back in college when the biggest thing I had to worry about was waking up for my 10 a.m.

Our schedules don’t match at all. One works a nine-to-five, the other’s still in school, and I’m somewhere in between—working when they’re off, off when they’re busy. Most mornings, I wake up and start doing the mental math of energy: how much I have to give to work, to friends, to myself. I love this city, but it’s hard to find structure when every day looks different. I used to think I’d thrive on unpredictability; now it feels more like I’m constantly trying to make something steady out of the noise.

When it all starts to feel too loud—the restaurant, the pressure, the weird kind of loneliness that comes with doing what you love but not quite being there yet—I put in my one remaining AirPod (the other’s forever lost somewhere between Broadway and Canal) and hit play on Everything’s Embarrassing by Sky Ferreira.

There’s something about that song that feels like standing under fluorescent lights at 2 a.m., realizing you still don’t have it figured out. It’s the soundtrack to trying—to walking home from work half-delirious, to overthinking texts, to caring too much about things that might not matter. It’s not poetic as much as it's painfully human.

TikTok seems to agree. My feed is full of Everything’s Embarrassing edits: Rue from Euphoria, Cassie from Skins, Rory Gilmore when she stopped being the golden girl. Not as symbols, but as reflections—messy, emotional, constantly learning in public. I think that’s what the song gets right. It’s not about shame. It’s about honesty. It’s about admitting that being young and ambitious and unsure all at once is kind of humiliating, but it’s also what makes you real.

Leaving my Stanley at the Brandy Melville counter and being too mortified to go back. Ordering a new one on Uber Eats because I was tired and dramatic. Getting on the wrong train and ending up in Coney Island even though I swore I knew better. Those things still make me want to sink into the sidewalk, but lately, I’ve been trying to treat them differently. My motto has sort of become: if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. So I laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because I have to. Maybe that’s what Everything’s Embarrassing is really about—learning to live in the middle of your own mess without flinching.

Then there’s Everything Is Romantic by Charli XCX, the other part of this title and the other half of my mood lately. When Brat came out, I immediately added that song to my pregame playlist. It felt confident and jaded in equal measure, which is exactly how I want to feel most days. But when the orchestral remix showed up in the new Wuthering Heights trailer with Jacob Elordi looking tortured and Margot Robbie staring out some windswept English window, it felt like a whole new song. 

Now that remix is everywhere. People are using it for edits of movie couples, TV scenes, engagement videos, even clips of themselves walking through cities alone. Fall in love again and again. It’s corny, but it’s also kind of beautiful, the collective attempt to turn everyday life into something cinematic.

That’s what I’ve been doing too, without meaning to. When I spill a drink or get stuck on the subway, I tell myself it’s character development. When I spiral about where I’m headed, I call it a plot twist. Maybe that’s what romanticizing really is: not pretending things are perfect, but believing they could matter anyway.

Sometimes, on my way home after a late shift, I catch that feeling. I’ll be in the back of an Uber, head against the cold window, the city lights smearing like watercolors. My feet ache, my hair smells like beer, and I’m half-asleep. But for a second, it all feels okay. Like I’m in a movie no one else is watching.

Maybe that’s the thing about your twenties. It’s not about balance or control. It’s about those fleeting moments when the chaos quiets and the beauty sneaks in anyway.

That’s what both songs remind me: Everything’s Embarrassing is the falling apart, and Everything Is Romantic is the part where you fall in love with it anyway.

So this is where I’m starting. Developing Feelings will probably shift as I do, but right now it’s about the space between those two songs and the parts of life that don’t make sense yet but still deserve to be documented.

Because if everything’s embarrassing and everything’s romantic, maybe that just means everything’s worth feeling.

xo,

Ashley